City to hire 2 compliance officers

Block grant approved by city commissioners will pay salaries of officers, one secretary for one year.

LAKE WORTH — A Community Development Block Grant of $291,846 was approved by Lake Worth City Commissioners at Tuesday’s meeting to hire two more code officers and a secretary for a year.

The vote was 4-1, with City Commissioner Andy Amoroso opposed.

Under contract employee option 1, two officers will be hired at a total cost of $270,000. A secretary will be hired for a $59,000 annual salary. Total expenses under the option, which includes vehicle maintenance, supplies and fuel, is $462,255.

The city would be responsible for taking $170,409 from its general fund.

“I’m still concerned we’re taking $170,000 out of the general fund,” Amoroso said.

Under the other two options, the city would have used more than $234,000 and $352,000 from the general fund respectively.

Commissioner Omari Hardy, didn’t agree with using all of the money on salaries for code officers. “We have the $40 million bond, which is taking care of a third of our roads. We do have $22 to $25 million of penny-salestax money which is earmarked for infrastructure over the next 10 years,” he said. “For a defined period of time...we’ll have tens of millions of dollars to dedicate on infrastructure spending. We are awash with capital. We shouldn’t trickle down on infrastructure when we have other needs that we can address.”

Mayor Pam Triolo said the money shouldn’t be used for salaries and should be used for projects. “CDBG grant funds have been instrumental in transforming our neighborhoods when it comes to infrastructure and road projects...on streets that were ignored for a 100 years,” she said. “Bring (workers) in... so our code people can go out and deal with code.”

Hardy also said it’s also important to put pressure on property owners who live in Wellington and other parts of Palm Beach County who are getting paid for owning bad sites. “We need to put as much pressure on the slumlords to upgrade their properties or to pay the piper,” Hardy said. “Hire as many people as we

can to go out and observe as many as violations as we can and force property owners to correct them. Manpower is important in this.”

The deadline for a decision was Monday. If commissioners didn’t vote Tuesday, the money would have gone away.

But City Manager Michael Bornstein said city officials have been talking about the issue for several months.

“This is not the first time it’s come back,” he said. “I’ve heard several comments this is last minute. This is not waiting until the last minute, so I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression...we will find a purpose for this money.”

It’s the worst-kept secret in Lake Worth that the city’s code division suffers from an image problem and that it has been dogged for years by residents and city officials who tell horror stories about it.

“Code enforcement has been an issue for as long as I’ve been here,” Bornstein, hired in 2012, told The Palm Beach Post in April. “A lot of good things have happened, but that’s not good enough and we all recognize that.”

Before the vote, Hardy said residents on the west side of Dixie Highway have had serious issues in their neighborhood for years.

“There are code issues in their neighborhoods that haven’t been addressed in decades,” he said. “For once, can we lavish this area?”